THE ORIGINS OF ROME AND THE ROMANS
Little reliable evidence is available for early Roman history, and no detailed written account survives from before the third century bc, centuries after the events in question.
For the Romans, their existence as a people began with the legendary Trojan hero Aeneas, who with his followers fled the fall of Troy to the Greeks.
Aeneas had various adventures, recounted by the Roman poet Vergil in the Aeneid, including a torrid love affair with Dido, the queen of Carthage in North Africa. Abandoning Dido, who then committed suicide swearing eternal enmity between Carthage and Aeneas’s people, Aeneas and his followers proceeded north and settled in Italy, near the mouth of the Tiber.Rome itself was held to have been founded in 753 bc by two twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. The city was named after Romulus, who became its first king after murdering Remus in a dispute over an omen.
Early Rome was an agricultural community much like any other in the region, Latium (modern Lazio). There was nothing at this stage to indicate its future greatness, although it was situated at an important crossing point of the Tiber, which perhaps was what brought Rome under the influence of the Etruscans, an advanced and sophisticated civilisation to the north, in Etruria (modern Tuscany). Indeed, it has been suggested that Rome was founded by the Etruscans. However that may be, though, Rome was inÂfluenced from an early stage by the Etruscans, in whose shadow Rome initially developed, and at least two of Rome’s last three kings were probably Etruscans.